Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I had several great history teachers ( Tom Fanning and Fr. John Gavin O.S.A. in high school and Fr. Ronan, S.J and Dr. Larry McCaffery at Loyola University. Of all the American Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt was mu favorite. The Big Stick Policy ( adapted from a West African aphorism and applied to American Foreign Policy) gave rise to the Roosevelt Corollary to The Monroe Doctrine: America would intervene anywhere in the Western Hemisphere to insure protection of American interests. Lefties like to call this Imperialism or, if they feel generous, Paternalism.

Dismissing with a wave of my two-by-four any added Ward Churchillian litanies of American bully atrocities, let's just agree that America played played fair in its own backyard.

In 1902, the Leader of Venezuela was a tin-pot cattle rustler with a private army by the name of Cipriano Castro - a real piece of work. When not looting his country six ways to Sunday, he was borrowing oodles of boodle from bankers in Great Britain, Germany and Italy. Like most deadbeats the foreign powers sent the fleets to make Cipriano buck up.

Kaiser Bill's Fleet in a display of uproarious German humor bombarded a few harbors.

Teddy dispatched Admiral Dewey and the Great White Fleet out of Caribbean and tipped off Kaiser Bill that the guy who sent Spain's Navy to the bottom of Briny deep was more than temperamentally inclined to toss some ordinance over the bow of Kriegsmarine- Carib. Theme Squareheads were along way from a friendly coal station and the Panama Canal was Teddy's Pet Project.

The Germans, The Brits, the Italians and later the Dutch were served up the payoff by The Hague.

Teddy controlled Imperialism and walked it out of the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere - Kaiser Bill did not learn and his Zimmerman Note helped bring America into WWI and himself into Dutch retirement.

Teddy Roosevelt had only to contend with foreign Imperial powers. Back then, the losing Party were loyal opposition. They had Teddy's back. Not so today.

Today, the opposition talks about a President with whom they disagree and violently disrespect, like an obnoxious drunk talks about the woman he married like she was a pathetic and miserable as himself. Suckers beef. The loudmouth does little to make a happy home for his kids and the poor girl who married him, for better or worse, but likes the sound of his own voice.

America ( which includes our loudmouth opinion Alkies)has to contend with Marxists in power in South America and Cuba and their fan club comprised of elite American Progressives - who happen to control Moveon.org, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, MSNBC, the DNC and Senator Barack Obama.

I read an interesting take on the sharp differences between Obama and McCain by a young guy from Georgia named Jeff O'Bryant. Here's what Jeff writes:

Fidel Castro recently praised Obama for his “great intelligence,” “debating skills” and “work ethic” and wrote that Obama is “the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency.” So Obama is the favorite choice of Castro, a Communist dictator that has been responsible for thousands of human rights abuses.

Castro realizes he has nothing to fear from Obama.

Hugo Chavez didn’t exactly endorse Obama when he recently claimed that Venezuela’s relations with Washington would worsen if McCain were elected. “Sometimes one says, ‘worse than Bush is impossible,’ but we don’t know,” Chavez said, according to Reuters. “McCain also seems to be a man of war.” Still, even lacking an outright statement of support, Chavez, the authoritarian communist who has trampled basic rights, severely weakened both Venezuela’s economy and democracy, and helped to destabilize global oil prices, would rather see Obama than McCain in the White House.

Chavez realizes he has nothing to fear from Obama.

Obviously, we do not want the whole world to fear us. But the fate of Saddam as an example of the good U.S. power can do in the world is not lost on those of a like kind, an example Obama clearly isn’t prepared and indeed has no inclination to make of others. He has offered to talk with no preconditions. Like Neville Chamberlain meeting with Hitler, Obama has no idea what he is doing.

I fully agree Jeff; Senator Obama and Neville are both snappy dressers and given to chatting up bounders. I believe that John McCain would take a busted beer bottle to Hugo - Que Hombre!

Way back last Spring the Tinhorn Later-day Cipriano Castro, Hugo Chavez, who is bankrupting his country in way that would make the loutish Castro envious, stated his fear and hatred of John McCain.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a socialist and fierce U.S. critic, warned on Tuesday that relations with Washington could worsen if Republican candidate John McCain wins this year's presidential election.

Chavez said he hopes the United States and Venezuela can work better together when his ideological foe, U.S. President George W. Bush, leaves the White House next year, but he said McCain seemed "warlike."

"Sometimes one says, 'worse than Bush is impossible,' but we don't know," Chavez told foreign correspondents. "McCain also seems to be a man of war."

Chavez -- who has called Bush "the devil", "a donkey" and 'Mr Danger" -- accuses the United States of having imperial designs in Latin America and says the White House has plotted his overthrow.

Although Venezuela remains a key supplier of oil to the United States, relations have steadily deteriorated since Bush took office in 2001.

Chavez is an outspoken critic of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has accused Washington of stirring unrest in Tibet to destabilize China.

Obama would sit down for coffee with Caudillo Chavez. John McCain would let Chavez and any other tyrant - in the Americas, Asia or the Middle East - learn American History - The Roosevelt Corollary and the McCain Principles: Straight Talk and Matching Methods for Good Folks and the Occasional Louses.

2 comments:

We haven't done squat in or with Cuba in 30 yrs. Are you saying McCain is bold enough to continue are policy of...well...of..doing nothing?

For years anti-communist, anti-Castro Cuban-Americans supported America's total ban and isolation of all things Cuban. The idea of letting Castro rot alone on his island worked to an extent.

That opinion is changing. We've long since avoided the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fidel is old and weak; so is his brother Raul. The country is ripe for American aid and influence.

The Condoleezza Rice chaired Commission for Assistance to Free Cuba has made little headway in finding a solution. They've simply tightened trade and travel embargos, a trend that's ebbed and flowed for close to 40 yrs. now. The country is in ruins. I don’t think Roosevelt would be too proud.

Teddy Roosevelt adopted the policy of "speaking softly and carrying a big stick". Bush-McCain seem to have a hard time with the "speak softly" part of the equation. We've heard nothing but huff and puff rhetoric that fuels the fire dopes like Hugo Chavez thrive on.

Obama's confidence in himself and the United States Armed Forces prevents him from having to get red in the face every time he talks about foreign policy. When Obama is President, he will speak softly and carry a big stick.

Zowee. As an Obama Democrat who thinks Teddy Roosevelt was the greatest president in U.S. history, I couldn't disagree with the thrust or the specifics of your post more. Roosevelt was able to use all weapons in the state arsenal - navy, diplomacy, espionage, commerce - to effect a split between Columbia and Panama, a newly-minted republic specifically created to support U.S. canal building. If McCain were trying to get the Panama Canal built, he would've bombed Columbia and then said, "My friends, we need to station troops in Bogota until someday, somehow, somebody builds a canal." This whole Chamberlain/Obama canard is beneath any logical discourse and makes any who engages in the conversation stupider for having done so. Iran is not Nazi Germany, Hugo Chavez is not Stalin, and we are the biggest baddest kid on the block... unless we throw away our top-notch military on long term occupations that don't serve our strategic interests. Teddy Roosevelt stepped up the timetable for Cuban independence and, even after a bloody incursion in 1906, he still made every effort to extricate the U.S. from Cuban affairs. Somehow, TR didn't think it made much sense to commit troops long-term to a country that didn't want us (unless you count the Philipines).

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Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican

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A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
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Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
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